No author has created with less emphasis such pathetic characters as Chekhov has.

Quote by Vladimir Nabokov

Topics: Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but...

It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but...

A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the...

A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the...

A masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to...

A masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to...

A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to...

A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to...

A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.

A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.

There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.

There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.

Turning one's novel into a movie script is rather like making a series of sketches...

Turning one's novel into a movie script is rather like making a series of sketches...

Revelation can be more perilous than Revolution.

Revelation can be more perilous than Revolution.

Solitude is the play field of Satan

Solitude is the play field of Satan

Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.

Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.

There is only one school of literature - that of talent.

There is only one school of literature - that of talent.

All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain...

All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain...

There is nothing in the world that I loathe more than group activity, that communal...

There is nothing in the world that I loathe more than group activity, that communal...

Happy is the novelist who manages to preserve an actual love letter that he received...

Happy is the novelist who manages to preserve an actual love letter that he received...

Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.

Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.

I would like to spare the time and effort of hack reviewers and, generally, persons...

I would like to spare the time and effort of hack reviewers and, generally, persons...

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is...

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is...

The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in...

The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in...

I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like...

I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like...

Complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospective: it has to be...

Complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospective: it has to be...